Want to Build a Family History Legacy Book

Writing Family History with Author Ryan Littrell

I could think of no better way to close out the last day of The Family History Writing Challenge then to share with my readers this interview with Ryan Littrell. Ryan wrote and self-published his family history memoir Reunion: A Search for Ancestors. He was kind enough to share his writing experience with our challenge members.

Lynn: Welcome
Ryan to The Family History Writing Challenge and The Armchair Genealogist, I wonder
if you could take a few minutes to tell us your story. How does a lawyer from
New York City find himself immersed in family history and then take the plunge
into family history writing?

Ryan: Thank you for inviting me! I grew up in a small town in central
Illinois, and moved to New York after law school. I’d never really known much
about my ancestors, but that changed when I went back to visit my family in
Illinois for Christmas, not long after moving to New York.

A few days into the trip, my mom
showed me a letter that she and my aunt Donna had found in an old box. The
letter was unsigned, and we had no idea who’d written it, but it gave the names
of some of my ancestors, and some dates. And soon I found myself coming home
from work and spending the next few hours Googling my ancestors’ names and
searching every website I could find for more clues. (Some people might call me
crazy, while others might say I’m obsessed. I prefer the term “dedicated.”)

Then, as I uncovered one ancestor
after another, I began to wonder about their lives, not just their names and dates
and places of burial. Just who were these people, and what were they all about?
I realized that I cared more about their stories than their genealogical
details, and that’s how I started writing Reunion.

Lynn: Did
you consider yourself a writer before this venture? What happened that made you
decide to make the jump from family historian to family history writer? How did
you prepare yourself for writing this book aside from your family history
research?

Ryan: Actually, writing this book didn't involve much of a jump; the kinds of things that I jotted down in my notebook while
doing genealogical research were the same kinds of things that ended up in the
final version of Reunion. Even when I
was just beginning to learn about my ancestors, I was already writing about
them. And later, as I made progress in writing the book, I still kept up with
the research. So for me, at least, the best preparation for writing this book
was the search itself.

Lynn: Many
family history writers write for themselves, their families, their future
descendants. Why did you decide to write a commercial book? Why take your book
public? What was your motivation?

Ryan: When I started writing the book, I
didn’t have a particular goal in mind, other than to tell the story as well as
I could. But as Reunion developed, and
I got a better sense of what the final work would be like, I began to suspect
that other people (even strangers) might see a bit of themselves in it. Because
this story—a person going on a journey to uncover his origins, and learn where
he came from—doesn’t just belong to me, or to any one person. Sure, the details
of my story might be different from yours, but the underlying dynamics are so
similar. So many of the paths are well-trod.

Lynn:One
of the greatest challenges in writing a family history that you want someone
else to read is getting the reader to invest in your ancestors and in the case of
Reunion, your personal genealogical journey. How do you feel you achieved this
in Reunion? Why do readers feel invested in your story?

Ryan: Well, I don’t know for sure whether
I achieved it—that’s for readers to decide! But if readers do feel invested in this story, it would be because Reunion has managed to tap into
something that a lot of us share, as I just mentioned. I certainly hope that
when people read this, they don’t come away thinking, “Well, I’m glad for him
that he had this life-changing journey, but what’s in it for me?” I hope they
almost feel like they’re in my shoes. Hopefully, they’ll see some of their story
in mine.

Lynn: Family
historians are fact gathers, when writing our stories we face the arduous task
of trying not to include every genealogical fact we have uncovered over our
years of research. What methods did you employ to keep your story from becoming
too dense with facts?

Ryan:You've highlighted what’s probably
the greatest challenge in writing a book like this. On the one hand, every fact
matters, and you can never be certain which clue might end up being the one
that solves the mystery. On the other hand, a recitation of facts quickly bogs
down the narrative.

And, to be honest, I don’t think
there’s a hard-and-fast rule to adhere to, or a sure-fire method to employ. I
just think it takes work, perhaps a lot of time, and some experience in
figuring out where to strike the balance. As I wrote Reunion, I was constantly trying to please the persnickety genealogist
in me, while also trying to please the storyteller in me. I don’t think either
one is happy, but hopefully they’re both kind of satisfied.

Lynn: I
love the structure of your book. We follow your genealogical journey but you
alternate those chapters with the history of the McDonald Clan. Can you tell us
a about how the decision came to structure the novel in this manner?

Ryan: Thanks for the compliment! I knew
from the beginning that Reunionwouldn't simply be a tale of my own search for ancestors, because that’s just
one part of the puzzle. In order to grasp what our ancestors mean to us, we
have to understand the broader context in which they lived; their time and
place helped to define them just as our time and place help to define us. As I
wrote the book, I cared about names and dates and details, but only because I
was beginning to get a sense about who these ancestors really were, what their
lives were like. Gradually, I came to realize that maybe the best way to
capture this dynamic would be to tell my ancestors’ story, interspersed with
mine.

Lynn: Most
writers start out with an idea in mind when they begin writing. Rarely do they
stick with that vision. Writing is really a process that involves an evolution
of not only the story but the evolution of the writer as well. How different
does your book look today from when you first conceived it? Secondly, how has the process of writing your
family history story changed you, the writer?

Ryan: You’re certainly right
about how a book can change—this book is very different from what I envisioned
when I started. Originally, I wanted to write a book that was more essay-like,
a series of reflections about how and why family history matters to people.
Over time, though, I began to see how telling a story might shed more light on
these things than expository prose could, and so Reunion became more of a novel than an essay. Before writing this
book, I saw myself as a nonfiction writer who might someday write a novel, but
now I see myself as a novelist who might someday go back to nonfiction.

Lynn:How
long did it take you to write and publish your book, from the idea to holding
the final product in your hands? What were your biggest challenges along the
way? What sorts of things slowed the process down for you?

Ryan: It took about six years from start
to finish, but much of that time was devoted to life outside of writing. The
greatest challenge was simply learning how to write a book like this; I didn’t
know how to write Reunion until I’d
already written it. Like any writer, I had to figure out things as I went along.
(And that goes for any profession or skill, from painting to baseball.) You can
learn so much from bloggers and other writers—including the participants and
guest authors in the Family History Writing Challenge!—and their advice and
recommendations are extremely valuable. But ultimately, it’s just you and the
computer screen. And your ancestors, of course.

Lynn: I
believe the two greatest demons a writer faces is making the time to write and
beating back those negative voices. How did you personally deal with these
demons? What did your writing routine look like? What kind of support group did
you have in place?

Ryan: You mean other than my local
chapter of Genealogy Addicts Anonymous? More than anything, I was fortunate to
have family and friends who were willing to give me honest opinions, and their
support often silenced those voices of self-doubt. But in some instances,
people pointed out things that could be improved, and that was much more
valuable than outright praise. Self-doubt should be kept in check, but it can
also prevent you from becoming overconfident—and so it might improve your
writing.

For me, in any event, it’s hard to
create a writing routine, because there are some days when the words are
flowing, and then there are days when I have trouble just finishing a paragraph.
There are some writers who can sit down at the computer, at some scheduled
time, and write X number of words,
and then click Save. These people
make me very jealous.

Lynn: What
surprised you the most about the writing and publishing process? Where there preconceptions or myths about
writing and publishing that were dispelled through the journey of this book?

Ryan: This may not be the
most exciting answer, but the truth is that I was most surprised by how
time-consuming the basic mechanics were—the steps involved in taking a document
on your computer and turning it into a physical book (and a digital file for
e-readers). It’s easy for a writer to think that a book is finished once every
word has been put in the right place. But there’s so much involved in designing
and formatting that text, along with the book cover.

Lynn: You
chose to self-publish Reunion. Why did you choose this route? How did you
educate yourself on the publishing industry?

Ryan: For me, independence is very
important, and that’s the chief benefit of self-publishing. But self-publishing
has its disadvantages, too, and so it may not be the right choice for everyone.
Many authors, for instance, place a lot of value on the services that a
traditional publisher provides. My decision came after reading a lot of online
articles and blogs discussing the pros and cons of self-publishing—and with
respect to Reunion, at least, the
pros outweighed the cons.

Lynn:What
vehicles are you currently using to promote and market your book?

Ryan: For now, mostly, I try to spread
the word through Facebook; I’ve found that a Facebook page is a great way to
connect with readers. I’m on Twitter, too, and I know that a lot of authors
love it, but I’m just more comfortable with Facebook, at least for the time
being.

Lynn: Did
you outsource the editing, design and formatting of your book, or was this a
complete DIY project? What advice do you have for other readers who are
considering self-publishing?

Ryan: I did some things myself, and
outsourced others. I discovered that I was able to design the layout of the
print version of the book on my own (with a lot of help from my wife Penny),
but I had to rely upon someone else to do the e-book version. And I hired a
copy editor, who checked for typos and other errors but didn't do a full, substantive
edit.

I’d advise any self-publishing
author to at least hire a copy editor, because it’s easy to get so close to
your text that you miss little things (such as writing “5” rather than “five”).
If you’re not comfortable with programs like InDesign or Quark, I’d also
recommend hiring someone to do the layout of the print version of the book. And
unless you design e-books for a living, you’ll need to hire someone to do that,
as well; formatting an e-book is much more complicated than many people
realize.

Lynn: I
have must ask you about the cover of your book. Usually family history memoirs
tend to have pictures of ancestors or ancestral hometowns on the cover. You
chose a different route. Can you explain the concept behind the cover of your
book?

Ryan: The book cover came about through a
collaboration between Penny and our cover designer, David Drummond. Penny came
up with the idea of depicting people as figures connected to one another, linked
together, in the way that generations on a family tree are. David, then, arranged
these figures so that they formed a facial profile of a single person. So I
think the cover says something about the connectedness between generations, and
how our ancestors might be a part of who we are.

Lynn:Do
you have any plans for a future book? Will it be in the family history genre?

Ryan: Yes, I’ve started work on a new
book, which I hope to publish by the end of the year. It’s a novel, and very
much about family history. I look forward to introducing it to readers!

Lynn:Do
you have any final words of advice for our challenge members or readers whose
ultimate goal maybe to write and or publish a family history book?

Ryan: Do it. The worst-case scenario is
that somebody, somewhere, criticizes your writing. But why worry about what
they think? This is your family, after all, and the story deserves to be told.

Thank you Ryan, I hope readers will grab a copy of your book and find in it the inspiration to write their own family history stories.

About the Author

Ryan Littrell grew up in Chatham, Illinois and graduated from Northwestern University, followed by Boston College Law School, where he served as an Executive Editor of the Boston College Law Review. He lives in New York City, and Reunion: A Search for Ancestors is his first book.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Gee I have a research journal I've kept over years of finding my kin and how I pieced families together and located, maybe I should write a novel on my research. Thinking in Montana; but born and raised in New Jersey! New Jersey, Colony and breadbasket for the colonies at one point in time!!!

I purchased this book and read it as soon as it came from amazon.ca. As I read, I hummed. (John McDermott's version of "Glencoe.") And I knew then how to start my own family history book, even though it's different from Ryan's, will probably (no, definitely) undergo significant changes before it's through, and will only be offered to my family members. Thanks Lynn and Ryan.

Subscribe To This Blog

The information contained in this blog is free to all who visit. If you find the information valuable and wish to support the mission of The Armchair Genealogist please use the donate button below. Thank you for your support!